


O'Porter & Venky

by circumvention (brainwane)



Category: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Fandom
Genre: 100-1000 Words, 2000s, Academia, American Politics, Arguing, Artificial Intelligence, Asian-American Character, Assassins, Character of Color, Copyright, Creepy, Crime, Current Events, Dark Agenda, Desi Character, Dialogue-Only, Disturbing Themes, Drabble, Geeky, Gen, Humor, Legal Drama, Massachusetts, Moral Ambiguity, Multi, Murder, Original Character Death(s), Out of Character, POV Third Person Omniscient, Presumed Dead, Programming, Pseudoscience, Python - Freeform, RPF - 20th-21st Century Politics, Silly, University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-20
Updated: 2010-03-20
Packaged: 2017-10-08 04:14:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brainwane/pseuds/circumvention
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two 101-word stories inspired by Fred von Lohmann's talk at New York University, 23 Feb 2009.</p>
            </blockquote>





	O'Porter & Venky

**O'Porter**

Most clients sounded more stressed and less grammatical than this guy. "Why did YouTube take down a video without soundtrack music? I didn't break any copyrights, did I?"

"You came to the right effing lawyer," O'Porter smirked, though technically EFF had fired him when he kept calling Seth a "Latin hunk." "Let's see it."

The stranger clicked Play and swiveled his laptop. O'Porter watched hamsters and tried to hear the words under the strange hiss --

Seth David Schoen closed the lid, peeled off his mask, and walked away from O'Porter's body. Really, breaking the [Content-ID tool](http://gabriellacoleman.org/blog/?p=1322) was just a bonus.

  


**Venky**

"I'm saying, ['Leibnitzian Python wonder-language that contains no ambiguity'](http://www.crummy.com/2004/06/25/1) was a JOKE, not a spec."

"So he was a jester-philosopher, the Birbal of his day."

"I think Colbert, Haskins or Stewart --"

"If code is law, shouldn't law be code? And who'll port it but us?"

"But it's the Cyc problem. We write legislation using subjective moral distinctions that change over time. Barring Seldon-level sociological prediction, your version 1 architecture is going to include something as abhorrent to future Americans as slavery is to us. Worst. Legacy. Code. Ever."

"Not if [CSAIL](http://www.csail.mit.edu/) works with us," said the dean of MIT Law.

**Author's Note:**

> Also inspired of course by Leonard and by [Brendan](http://www.xorph.com/anacrusis/). Very much not inspired by anything Seth or anyone at the Electronic Frontier Foundation has ever done.
> 
> Crossposted [at my journal](http://www.harihareswara.net/sumana/2009/02/24/0).


End file.
